Sherlock Season 4: Synopsis for The Final Problem
By Lacy Baugher
The Sherlock Season 4 finale is almost here. What can we expect to see in “The Final Problem”? The official synopsis is pretty vague.
The Sherlock season finale is almost upon us. Which means that we all have a lot of questions that still need answering. What’s the deal with Sherlock’s surprise sister? Why did she concoct such an elaborate plan requiring multiple disguises and murders just to get close to John? Did she really shoot him? And has Mycroft been keeping her in a cage all these years or what? Heretofore unknown siblings we’ve never seen before suddenly appearing out of nowhere is a bit more Days of Our Lives than Sherlock, after all.
We have no idea what Euros wants or whether her appearance ties in to the Moriarty mystery leftover from Season 3. And we certainly don’t know why Sherlock and John are flying through the air in the what has to be the worst CGI sequence ever. But, theoretically, we’ll find out the answers this Sunday in finale episode “The Final Problem”.
Unsurprisingly, the official episode synopsis offers little in the way of clues.
From PBS:
"In this episode, written by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, long-buried secrets catch up with the Baker Street duo.Someone has been playing a long game indeed and Sherlock and Watson face their greatest ever challenge. Is the game finally over?"
I mean, could they vague that up a little harder?
“The Final Problem” has no obvious source in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle canon. Or at least, not one that seems terribly applicable in this particular case. There IS a Conan Doyle story that’s also titled The Final Problem. But the Sherlock crew already used several pieces from this tale on the show, particularly in Season 2 finale “The Reichenbach Fall”. (The Final Problem is the story in which Holmes originally dies in a face-off with arch-nemesis Moriarty.) So it’s unclear whether we’re meant to take the title as a joke or just a hint that we’ll be revisiting some of the themes or plot elements from that earlier episode. Maybe we’ll learn more about Moriarty’s posthumous plans for Sherlock. Maybe the title just sounds ominous. It could go either way.
“The Final Problem” also sounds like something of a conclusive ending. Yes, it’s unlikely that Sherlock is about to end for good. But this episode could serve as a kind of ending – a conclusion to the Moriarty narrative that’s driven large chunks of the show’s first four seasons. If Sherlock only has a few seasons left in it, or – more likely, if you ask me – is about to start churning out one-off specials every few years when they can get the band back together, this seems like as good a dividing line between those two eras as any. But, of course, this is all so much speculation until we see the finale for ourselves.
Next: Sherlock: Three Questions for Season 4’s Final Episode
Sherlock airs January 15 on PBS. We’ll have a recap here at Culturess after the episode concludes.